I am having the same or similar problem as Steve [Edit: branched from Indesign 5.5 displays text with ragged edge.]. I have done my best to research this but I cannot figure it out. I am using a Macbook Pro, 15 inch (late2011) with the normal display. I have Leapord 10.7.3. My InDesign is 7.5.2.

The text appears jagged, unless zoomed into 100 percent. Here is a screen shot of the problem at 300 percent:

Definitely looks like a problem with the display. We've been told for years that we have WYSIWYG displays, but it isn't really true. What you see is CLOSE to what you get depending on the ability of the pixels to display it smoothly.

Glyphs with round bottoms typically extend slightly below the baseline, and it looks like at some your 100% zoom level the choice is being made to use an extra pixel on the screen rather than lose the bottoms (but look at the G in Good, which looks like the other way). As you zoom in you have more screen pixels to work with for any given part of the text so it gets better, though it wouldn't surprise me if it got wonky at some odd non-incremental zooms like 237%.

The text appears jagged, unless zoomed into 100 percent. Here is a screen shot of the problem at 300 percent:

I'm slightly confused...your first capture appears to be smaller than the 100% capture, did you resize the image before uploading it? Normally the 300% image should be 3 times bigger than the 100%. Or did you really mean 30%?

Are there any fixes for it? Is it not considered a bug or glitch? It does not effect output but it can be aggrevating when dealign with stuff on screen.

The first photo was at 100, the second photo is at 300 (which in screenshot form, the text does appear a little ragged, not like on screen when I saw it. this shot was intended to show the text how it should be) It still looked jagged so I did another zoom in, not really sure how much. It was just showing as you zoom in in gets less and less ragged or jagged. Im not sure if i messed up the numbers or something like that, if I did sorry. Im not sure why the size of the screen grabs looks weird either.

that should help. Pay no attention to the names of the files, cause I clearly got that wrong. I am not resizing the photos, this is just how they appear and upload.

In the second photo, third line look at the second word Monday, and notice the letter a. Also in the first line, look at "what are" The t and a (in the word are) are both smaller. (insert 8th grade girlfriend joke here)

Sorry if I was not clearly communicating. I guess the original post was not having the same problem, it appeared that way.

I think they are smaller, not shifted up because the top of the letterform will be the same across the *top of the* word, but not the baseleine.

The font is Baskerville Regular, 12 point at 14.4 auto leading for the content. Obviously the header is a bit smaller. I do know that the same effect will happen when these factors are changed however. In the screenshots I posted, there are character and/or paragrpah styles but the same issue happens with this typeface with or without styles.

I reproduced the problem pretty quickly with a new letter sized document and the default size settings. One thing I have not tried is reinstalling the font with new font file. But I have seen this issue with other fonts (I will try and get screengrabs for this soon, no promises sorry) so I didnt try that, naturally.

I'm with Peter on this one. I get the same "distortion" with some fonts, which would explain that the outline information for the font at a given zoom factor is just displaying differently based on the pixel size of the screen. The Baskerville TrueType version is obviously "built" differently than the OpenType font that John is describing. I certainly wouldn't worry about it; back in the days of OS8 and OS9 and Quark XPress, a user had to simply accept the jaggies onscreen, knowing that the output would be correct.

There may be some confusion about what is meant by "the display." When Peter wrote earlier, "Definitely looks like a problem with the display," I thought he meant either a hardware limit or a fundamental limit. But now I guess he just meant "the part of the software the displays the font on the screen."

I certainly wouldn't worry about it; back in the days of OS8 and OS9 and Quark XPress, a user had to simply accept the jaggies onscreen, knowing that the output would be correct.

Well, I think the reason to "worry" is primarily that it's ugly and looks bad and is hard to work in. I don't think anyone is concerned that it might print like this (though that'd be a pretty severe calamity!). It's also disconcerting when the on-screen display doesn't match the printed product; if it is off in one place, then you never know where else it will be off. This means you lose confidence in your display, and even sometimes notice real problems that you dismiss as being artifacts when they aren't. That's really unfortunate.

So I think it behooves us to get to the bottom of it and report it.

Surely it's not as simple as "all Truetype fonts do this, OpenType do not"?

There may be some confusion about what is meant by "the display." When Peter wrote earlier, "Definitely looks like a problem with the display," I thought he meant either a hardware limit or a fundamental limit. But now I guess he just meant "the part of the software the displays the font on the screen."

I'm not sure what I meant, other than it is an anomaly in how the type is being presented. Whether that's a hardware or software limitation, or a combination, I couldn't say. And I would guess it looks different on Macs than it does on my Windows system due to differences in type rendering technology.

I actually saw this a lot in the PageMaker era - on both Windows and Mac platforms. It was just a fact of life, one that I assumed came down to rendering of different font formats, whether or not there were bitmaps of the font installed, and so on. Haven't seen it in years - but I've not looked for it. Much like font greeking, it's something that I have trained myself to ignore, and to zoom in a bit if I need to see what is going on.

Considering that there must be at least a half dozen different fonts called Baskerville on my system, and I have no idea which one the OP is using (and his is probably a mac font and not testable here), this isn't much of a test, but here's how Baskerville (TT) Regular (Top) and Baskerville (T1) Normal (bottom) look here at 100% on my 27 " monitor at 1920 x 1200.

There's perhaps an anomaly in the capita C i circled, but hard to say.

I dont see the same issue I am having with your screenshot, Peter. Or Mike.

The font is Baskerville Regular. I dont know what other way to describe it there might be. It is not Baskerville old face and it is not italic and not bold or semi-bold. It says regular in that dropdown menu in indesign.

It is set for high quality display (the problem persists whatever setting is here)

and LCD font smoothing is turned on in system preferences.

To me, if the letter right next to another letter, there is no reason why the baseleines would need to be on separate pixel lines. This leads me to believe it is a bug or a glitch.

I also just tried changing my diplsay to a lower resolution, and that did not solve it either.

Not a good reply, but some versions of some fonts just do not display well. I apologize if this is mentioned further up but I was too lazy to reread the thread. Does your page print properly or export to PDF? If so, I would say it is the font itself. If not, then it is an ID issue.

Sorry that's the best I have to offer. You are not alone, but usually it is a display issue regarding hinting in the font, or other mysterious font issues.

I think the issue would still be one of display if the print is good, regardless of what is producing the display (ID or Acrobat). A good test would be to put the PDF on a computer without your font and view it in Acrobat (assuming the font is embedded of course). What that could tell you is whether it is a more universal issue with the font, or your system.

I cannot remember the font, but I had one that on my computer looked like crap both on-screen in PM and in a PDF. Printed great. Looking at that PDF on another persons computer (the service bureau in this case) it looked good. We then threw it on one of the Windows computers and while it didn't look as crispy as the Mac, it was far better than on my computer.

Doesn't mean that's the same font as the OP, and you left out the foundry. I hate to tell you how many fonts there are out there named Baskerville...

My TT version is 2.0 from monotype with a 1995 date, ID reports the T1 version as 1.0 with no foundry listed, and windows refuses to tell me anything-- it opens the tt version instead when I try to view it, but it has a 1990 modification date.

Hi all! I am having the exact same problem. I'm using InDesign 5 with Baskerville font under Mac OS 10.7.3. The only way I can solve this problem now is to create outline (Types > Create Outlines) of the problematic texts. Still, this solution is very inconvenience. I'll very appreciate a better solution for this problem.

The text looks weird when displayed at a very small size. That's not a surprise; in fact, thinking about it, it's surprising that a 7 pixel capital 'R' can still be recognized as "Baskerville"!

Fonts are designed at a large size, and every time you see it display at any size smaller than 1,000 pixels (at least!) some of the features you are seeing will be artefacts due to displaying it smaller than the designed size.

In other words, why complain that the baseline is not straight when there are lots of other "problems" with those very same characters!? (I can see large rectangular chunks, a.k.a. "pixels", which I'm sure are not in the original design. I can also clearly see all sorts of shades of gray, and I am fairly sure this text color is set to "Black". And so on ...)

When drawing a large character on a coarse screen with a *very* low number of pixels, rounding is inevitable. The less pixels you have, the more "rounding" will be making bad mistakes; and because a single pixel on this size accounts for 1/6th of the total character size, the effect is exagerrated. Compare it to the largest zoomed-in image above; in that image the pixels are also rounded to the nearest "whole" value. For that you suddenly decide that a 1-pixel difference is not important?

It's all just a screen artefact. The proof is given by the OP himself: "It prints properly, no jagged edges." Of course not -- the printer's resolution is high enough for all rounding to be practically invisible.

.. In the Baskerville case I'm pretty sure the problem is exagerrated because of bad hinting in the font itself. You see how all of the dropped characters have a curve at the lower bottom? That's Bad Hinting.

The problem is the baseline of letters changes in different zooms. Despite the fact the file is not changing at all. Also, what we see in screen is not how the final product prints. IF you dont see it as a problem, fine. But that does not mean it is not a problem. It very clearly IS a problem, which other people have as well.

The issue is when you have two letters right next to each other, there is no reason that they cannot share the horizontal pixel line. If there is a reason, it should be modified so that what I see on screen represents the file as best as possible. The other issues you mentioned are at their best presentation I would assume. Alternating baselines for letters is clearly not the best presentation.

Its not about rounding, its about optical alignment and the text representing how the file is set up, not representing some other file with alternating baselines. If it is not visible - then it is not important. PLain and simple. This is noticeable and very much so.

If the screen is not showing me the best representation of the file possible, it is not effective and I consider it an issue. You may not, that is fine. What we are looking for on this thread is suggestions and to find more out about who and why the problem is happening.

Also, its not only on the baseline, as you can see in the screen shots. It happens at the top of the letterforms as well.

bad hinting in the font itself. You see how all of the dropped characters have a curve at the lower bottom? That's Bad Hinting.

I booted up the ol' mirror-door G4 to look at this again. My suspicion is that it is entirely font-dependent. My old Baskervilles show this behavior, in both InDesign CS2 and PageMaker 6.5. That means: in both OS 9 and OS X! A bunch of other older fonts display this behavior as well.

If this bugs you, stop using those fonts. There are (as has already been observed in this thread) many other cuts of Baskerville.

The problem is the baseline of letters changes in different zooms. Despite the fact the file is not changing at all. ...

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The issue is when you have two letters right next to each other, there is no reason that they cannot share the horizontal pixel line. If there is a reason, it should be modified so that what I see on screen represents the file as best as possible. ...

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...What we are looking for on this thread is suggestions and to find more out about who and why the problem is happening.

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The "suggestions" are what the problems are. The font has bad hinting. You do not have the issue with every font, that is clear. Fonts are little computer applications. Gone are bitmap fonts that had a better correlation on-screen for the OS they were designed for. Instead, modern fonts, even badly designed ones, are little run-time applications. Use a better designed version of Baskerville. It likely will not exhibit the issue for on-screen display--which is what hinting affects. That the font is designed well enough not to exhibit the issue in print says the version you are using is designed well enough for what you are creating. But if the on-screen bugs you enough, try a different version of the font.